While Facebook still dominates as the largest social network, Twitter is the network that connects the whole world, far beyond circles of friends and acquaintances.
An effective Twitter can drive an enormous amount of traffic to your site, but often business owners feel like they’re shouting into an empty void.
And it’s true, if you’re not using Twitter effectively, that’s essentially what you’re doing.
Effective Twitter use includes frequent posting (tweeting a couple of times a week won’t cut it), interaction, providing engaging content, and paying attention to trends and analytics.
Often when people think of a tool for Twitter, they think of a plugin that copies your Facebook posts and posts them on Twitter (or vice-versa).
Double-posting is actually one of the least effective things you can do. It looks like you’re not present and can’t be bothered to actually engage with your followers.
Instead, use tools that enhance your Twitter presence, such as these:
1. ManageFlitter
Keep the “social” in social media by using this tool to find similar accounts to follow and interact with.
It also keeps your Twitter from getting bogged down by accounts by regularly unfollowing accounts that are dormant, don’t follow you, or are spam accounts.
ManageFlitter also offers remote access and useful analytics. It is free for a limited plan.
2. Buffer
An easy-to-learn social media management tool, Buffer has a free version that allows you to connect up to three social media profiles (Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn).
It is primarily a scheduling tool that allows you to create posts and schedule to tweet them at any time. For a monthly fee, you can add 10 platforms, have increased scheduling flexibility, and connect RSS feeds for content curation.
3. Periscope
If you’ve had success with Youtube (or are interesting in starting web broadcasting), Periscope allows you to broadcast live videos via Twitter and on the Periscope app.
What’s the advantage of live video?
For one thing, it allows you to interact live with viewers, who can text questions and comments during the broadcast. It’s great for tutorials, customer care, and giving your brand a multimedia edge.
4. Meet Edgar
We all have those weeks where we’re so swamped that things like keeping the Twitter queue loaded slips.
With Meet Edgar, you don’t have to worry about gaps in your tweeting schedule.
Here’s how it works:
You create posts, save them into categories, and schedule each category to post at specified times.
When there’s nothing left in a category queue, the tool automatically re-tweets one of the previously tweets, giving it new exposure to people who missed it the first time.
5. Tweriod
Timing can make or break your social media — if you tweet when your followers aren’t around to see it, you’ll likely be buried by the time they check their feed.
Tweriod is an online tool that analyzes the posting activity of your followers, then sends you a direct message or email with information on the best days and times to post for maximum exposure.
It takes into account posting times of followers from all around the world and tells you when to reach them in your own time zone.
6. Twibble
Good content is what keeps your followers engaged and coming back for more. Twibble allows you to connect an RSS feed (such as your blog) to your Twitter that content posts instantly, or have the tweets scheduled to go up at a later time.
Twibble posts don’t come out looking like a typical shared link tweet — they come complete with a nice thumbnail image that you can preview before they post.
7. TweetCaster
This free app is the perfect tool if you prefer to use smartphone for social media.
With a wide range of features that enhance mobile tweeting, such as customizable notifications and feed, filtering, stats, photo editing, tweet scheduling, readability mode for links, the ability to speak your tweets, create long tweets, and a who to follow feature.
8. Twilert
Keeping on top of your reputation is important, online as well as offline. Similar to Google Alerts, Twilert searches Twitter for your selected keywords and sends you an email when it finds something.
This especially useful for businesses to keep track of when your brand or company name is mentioned. You can not only see what’s being said, you can respond or join the conversation in a timely manner.
9. Hootsuite
One of the most widely used social media content management systems, Hootsuite can connect with 35 different social media platforms (the free version allows you to connect up to three).
If you use several platforms and find it excessively time-consuming, Hootsuite allows you to manage your accounts all in one place, including scheduling posts, collaborating with your team, and reviewing analytics.
Hootsuite also offers some of the best social media monitoring systems, so you can see what people are saying about you and your brand.
10. GroupTweet
Make it easy for everyone on your team to tweet with this tool — no more sharing your business Twitter password or having everyone learn to navigate new software.
Contributors can interact and post right from Twitter.com or the Twitter app. A range of low monthly fees apply, depending on the number of contributors and your follower count.
11. Paper.li
Content curation can easily become the most time-consuming part of an effective Twitter.
Paper.li streamlines content curation by processing millions of articles a day and allowing you to access the content that fits with your business.
You control the content in your feed by selecting topics, sources, and even keywords. You can easily omit sources you don’t want, too.
Not only does Paper.li help your find effective content, you can post to Twitter and Facebook directly from your Paper.li account.
12. IFTTT
Also known as If This Then That, IFTTT allows you create recipes that connect two independent apps to perform tasks that neither can do alone.
There are thousands of recipes that use Twitter, doing everything from automatically tweeting WordPress posts to converting Instagram photos into Twitter pics to saving links you favorite to Pocket.
The possibilities are nearly endless — you can create your own recipes, or use the ones that have already been created by other users.
Did we miss any Twitter tools that you can’t live without? We’d love to hear about them in the comments!
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sara says
Jon, (hmm Holly)
There is so much good in technology today. It can get a bit overwhelming, but I’m definitely going to check out Tweriod and Meet Edgar.
I’ve only used Hootsuite and CoSchedule. I tried using IFTT, but didn’t like how robotic it was. I find it better for reports or tracking trends to save in a Google Doc.
Have a lovely day,
Sara
Jon says
Hi Sara
It’s good to see you here 🙂
There definitely are far too many choices with tech tools these days. I was just discussing that in the office today and how we must make sure that we don’t buy everything that looks to save us time, as we’d run out of money, lol. But Edgar is fabulous, (and it works), and Tweriod tells us when to set the Edgar schedule.
Jon